I woke with a heavy groan. My head was pounding something fierce and it felt like I'd gorged myself on a bowl full of sand. Sure, the drinking session I'd had the night before had probably been one for the storybooks, if I could remember any of it, but I hadn't had a hangover like this since the very first time I'd gotten drunk.
I let my heavy eyelids crack open, yawned, and then stopped dead. Waking up in someone else's bed was a bit of a strange experience. Waking up in someone else's bed and the room looking like you'd just walked into an episode of Star Trek? Well, that was something else entirely.
This was definitely not my room.
My bedroom was small. It was a part of a tiny little flat that I rented in London, cramped and with a floor covered in dirty laundry that I hadn't yet bothered to throw into a washing machine.
There was a single, dim light, that flickered when the tube hurtled past, and it always smelt strongly of damp no matter what I or the landlord did.
It was certainly not the wide and expansive space, with metallic-looking walls and a dark wooden floor that lay before me.
My room did not have two strips of high tech-looking lights lining its ceiling, nor did it have any futuristic sliding doors with no handles, or a large window that looked out into a city where it seemed every building was made of glass that twinkled in the dual suns that were rising above the horizon.
Little by little the memories started to claw their way back into my head, worming themselves into place. The little girl, the van, the wet thwack of my head hitting the tarmac, and the creature that had sent me somewhere new. That creature had promised to send me to a brand new universe, a place that I could live a supposedly worthwhile life and fulfil my true potential, whatever that meant.
I tried to swallow the childish excitement that was threatening to boil over into a burst of hysterical laughter. I had travelled not just to a brand new world, but to an entirely new universe. Some futuristic cityscape on a planet in a binary star system. Sure, I'd died to pull it off, but it didn't exactly feel like death was the biggest deal in the multiverse anymore.
"Good morning, Jacob," a voice came from the ceiling. A small orb, which I had just taken to be some kind of ceiling light, had detached itself from the space it had held in the centre of the room and floated down until it floated in front of me at eye level. "The weather in Prespian City is fair, reaching highs of 17 Celsius, with a light breeze and no chance of precipitation. Please be reminded, sign-ups for the Galactic Guard take place at 11 am local time, in two hours."
"Uhhhh," I stumbled and ran my tongue over my teeth, "New voice… New teeth, that's weird… Sorry, what are you?"
"As with all Guard Initiates, I am your assigned BB, Ball Buddy!" The floating ball exclaimed jubilantly with a little spin. "I am to escort you around the grounds of the Prespian City Guard Station while you're with us, and then beyond that if you perform well enough in the fights!"
"The… fights?" I asked, unsure of what exactly I'd been immediately thrust into.
"Yes, yes, the fights that all initiates go through in the entry tournament, how else is the Guard meant to obtain the very best warriors on the planet to fight off the invading hordes of Null Space?"
It felt like I'd been catapulted into some crazy anime. Other worlds, tournament arcs, invading hordes from some kind of other space. The next thing I knew, this strange Ball Buddy thing would be asking to bond with me to unlock my hidden potential or some other power.
"Now, if you could just hold out your hand," the BB unit asked politely.
"Hold out my hand?" I asked, complying with the request anyway. "Why would you want me to do something like that?"
The floating sphere didn't even respond. It shot out a small cable, tipped by a dart, which dug into my hand.
The rush of information was near overwhelming, my brain was only just able to keep up. The Guard was an interplanetary space force, which protected the borders of the galaxy from invaders that were exterior to it, including these so-called Null Space creatures.
The battle had been raging for millennia, with neither side really giving any ground. I was just another in a long line of initiates that had signed up to be in the Guard program, but before that, I had to go through a brutal battle tournament to work out if I was strong enough to enter the Guard.
When I had lived back on Earth I hadn't done any kinds of martial arts training, or well any real training at all, I wasn't exactly the fittest of people considering I spent most of my time reading manga, watching TV and playing video games. But here, in this new world, things were going to be different. I could feel it. A power coursing through me, and it was itching for a fight.
The sphere had flickered out of existence, alongside the cable, the moment the voice had started up.
It was as if I had predicted the future, because exactly what I had expected to happen had happened. The little ball had linked itself to me, bonded itself to me, just as if I were the protagonist in an anime. I have a heavy sigh, all of a sudden I wasn't so sure if this wasn't a dream, and that this was all my dying brain's way of giving me one last wild ride before actually conking out on an operating table in some hospital.
I elected to ignore the voice in my head and swung my legs out of bed. I stood and walked over to the window. The city appeared to be immense. Every building was a skyscraper made with glinting glass panels, linked together with a series of bridges and skyways.
They would put even the tallest buildings of my homeworld to shame. There was no way my brain could come up with all this. The floating cars, the extravagant buildings, the binary stars, the Ball Buddy. I simply wasn't that imaginative.
"Fine, now that you've bonded with me or whatever, what can you actually do?" I turned away from the window and asked with a huff.
< So let me break it down nice and simple, you simple upright ape. I'm a hyper-fast computer system that syncs up with your internal manna and personality to help you fight against your opponents. I'm your bridge to this universe's underlying magic. Which is a good thing, considering your world didn't actually have any magic> it said that with a distinct level of disgust.
I shrugged on a polo shirt, some tracksuit bottoms and a workout jacket from inside the wardrobe. They weren't exactly stylish, but they were comfortable as hell and would clearly be pretty easy to move around in, which would be pretty important considering I was going to be fighting people soon enough.
"Thought this adventure was meant to be about science fiction worlds, not magical ones," I remarked offhandedly, not really expecting a response.
"My body is channelling manna? But I'm not even from around here," I said, and glanced at my hands as if they were going to start shooting off magical fireworks.